Restaurant Insider

Walking through my neighborhood, I can't help but covet the fig trees weighed down with green figs on the verge of full ripeness, the Asian pear tree in my neighbor's yard which holds, I'd guess, 40lbs of fruit right now. But in a few weeks, these and the myriad apples that are ripe right now in trees on nearly every Seattle street will perish, rot, or fall and turn to brown muck on the sidewalks if they're not picked and eaten.

This year’s Incredible Feast lived up to its name, as more than 25 chefs paired up with superstar farmers, ranchers and cheese makers on Sunday at Swanson’s Nursery.
Chef Tamara Murphy dreamed this dealie-o up years ago as a way to showcase the incredible edibles that show up at the Seattle Neighborhood Farmers Markets. Man, we are lucky to live here!

While the last week or so saw its usual share of food news from relative newbies – Marination Ma Kai opening, Chino's closing and the answer to the is-it-or-isn't-it Fuji Bakery mystery – two grand-dames of the Seattle restaurant world were quietly kicking off new chapters in their very admirable histories.

Do you eat wild salmon?
Then, chances are you’ve enjoyed fish from Alaska’s beautiful Bristol Bay, where massive fisheries produce roughly half of the salmon that shows up on plates around the U.S.
That’s one thing I learned when I showed up to a press conference yesterday at Seatown, called to discuss the threat to that habitat by the proposed Pebble Mine project.

The Southern restaurant from Heather Earnhardt we've been anticipating since spring (read more here) is finally, finally open. And what a tasty-looking menu! We can't wait to get our hands on an Auntie Annie biscuit sandwich with fried chicken, bread & butter pickles, mustard and honey ($7.50).

My first meal at Lampreia, Scott Carsberg's epic, nationally praised fine dining restaurant which lived in the space that Carsberg's Bisato now calls home, well, it must've been in 1999 or 2000.
Back then--as now, though perhaps less-so--Carsberg's reputation for perfectionism--along with a firey temper--preceded him.

Hello, hello. Master of the Obvious here to report that Bravo has just "revealed" that Season 10 of Top Chef will be located in Seattle. Herm... I think a little birdy might've broken that news earlier this summer?
The show debuts November 7th at 10pm. And naturally, first thing I did when I got the press release was search the lineup for a local cheftestant.

Often we talk about the restaurant industry, and it's understood that we mean the line cooks and chefs, servers, restaurant owners, farmers, purveyors, bussers, dishwashers and so on. Less so, peripherally, the media that covers them.

The team behind one of our favorite food trucks, Marination Mobile, will open a second brick-and-mortar location. Named Marination ma kai (after a Hawaiian phrase that roughly translates to "near the sea"), the restaurant will be located on Alki's beachfront.
Open 6am-10pm daily, the new location will serve Marination's already popular Hawaiian-Korean fare for lunch and dinner, in addition to "island breakfast staples" and some new items (Hawaiian shave ice!).

It seems there's a lull every late summer, a time when only a couple of restaurants open their doors. Makes sense: Most hope to open before the big summer eating rush, a time when profits can almost double thanks to extra seating outside, and extra drinking to toast blue skies and sun-kissed skin.
We're just coming out of that lull and we're now on the verge of another swell of restaurant openings. Here are a few of the restaurant's I'm excited about.

So, Labor Day happened. I guess that means summer is unofficially over, but I'm not buying it yet. And according to a pretty inspiring weather forecast for the rest of this week, neither is the sun. For those of you who aren't quite satisfied with the amount of summer you got over the last three months, the reminder that the official end of the season doesn't come until September 21st should be a welcome one. Clearly, what this all means is that a) the sun is still out, and b) you should eat more ice cream.

When new things happen in Ballard, they usually get done well, but they don't often get done big. Kickin' Boot Whiskey Kitchen, the new concept from the boys behind Matador, makes its presence known from the get-go in a big way: a large neon cowboy boot giddy-upping off the side of a former mill house that looms large over the Ship Canal.